


Ain't Seen You Like This Before || Yamamoto Taketora

by Rot_Llaves



Series: Ace of Hearts - Haikyuu || Short Stories || One Shots || Creative Rambles || [17]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: F/M, Falling In Love, First Date, Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Friends to Lovers, Glow Up Trope, Mutual Pining, Pining, Slice of Life, Song: Fresh Eyes (Andy Grammer), Taketora is a dork, Yamamoto a sucker for dem thigh highs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-25
Updated: 2020-08-25
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:41:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26113591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rot_Llaves/pseuds/Rot_Llaves
Summary: She’d discovered her feelings during their first year of high school, much to her chagrin. It wasn’t that she found love particularly distasteful and the distraction of a crush wasn’t entirely unwanted, but there was something about finding herself helplessly blushing over the actions of such a rambunctious and, frankly, embarrassing man that was humiliating. Sure, they’d sat next to each other for basically three years. Sure, she more often than not was paired with him for group projects and peer reviews and all that time together was bound to lead to some sort of feeling but…“Yamamoto?Really?” Her best friend Suda Hitomi had asked, incredulous during a lunch break in the first three months of first year. “But, he’s so...so...Yamamoto.”
Relationships: Yamamoto Taketora/Original Female Character(s)
Series: Ace of Hearts - Haikyuu || Short Stories || One Shots || Creative Rambles || [17]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1720834
Comments: 2
Kudos: 23





	Ain't Seen You Like This Before || Yamamoto Taketora

Was it normal for his palms to be this sweaty? Like, he knew he was nervous, but he wasn’t expecting the collective humidity of the entire expanse of the Amazon Rainforest to collect in the center of his hands. He could write off the heart palpitations and the foreboding sense that something was going to go awry. Those were the sort of things he was used to whenever he knew he was going to interact with a girl. Right now, though, he was a little afraid his hands were going to soak straight through his jeans to the skin on his knees, where he’d rested them for the past half hour.

Yamamoto Taketora wasn’t supposed to have been sitting on that blue fountain in the middle of the shopping center for going on two hours now, but he’d already gotten ready four hours before and by the time he was three hours out from the meeting time, he was too nervous to keep still. He’d decided that being early was leagues better than the possibility of being even 30 seconds late to meet her. Not when he still couldn’t believe that she’d agreed to a date _with him_ in the first place.

It had taken him a total of four months to even work up the courage to ask — and maybe that had been some sort of cosmic punishment for him because she’d been there, basically next to him, since middle school and he hadn’t taken notice of her until his last year of high school. It wasn’t that Enomoto Chiharu lacked charm or the type of qualities that made someone special. She just wasn’t the type of girl that overthought her impact on the world and, therefore, didn’t attract the eyes of boys who often lingered at the type of girls who needed the extra fuel of attention to get through the day.

For Taketora, Chiharu never occupied the same place in his heart and head as all the frilly girls fluttering about in his imagination. Not once during all those years of middle and high school did she make him want to fall to his knees in reverence. But, to be fair, she was never trying to elicit such reactions. Other matters held more importance to her, like fighting against every wrong she witnessed in the hallways or being sure that her project partner kept his head in the books rather than in the clouds.

Chiharu, on the other hand, had always had something of a soft spot for the obnoxious oaf that the teachers kept pairing her with, as if they were certain she was the only one that could reign him in long enough to actually complete a project. She wouldn’t have called it a crush (at least not until much, much later), but more of a mild fascination — in his reasoning for not only choosing to sport a Mohawk but to also dye it; in why, exactly, he was so enamored with the female sex and why that obsession never translated to action; in his tendency to relate everything to “needing more guts” and in his passion for volleyball.

She’d discovered her feelings during their first year of high school, much to her chagrin. It wasn’t that she found love particularly distasteful and the distraction of a crush wasn’t entirely unwanted, but there was something about finding herself helplessly blushing over the actions of such a rambunctious and, frankly, embarrassing man that was humiliating. Sure, they’d sat next to each other for basically three years. Sure, she more often than not was paired with him for group projects and peer reviews and all that time together was bound to lead to some sort of feeling but…

“Yamamoto? _Really_?” Her best friend Suda Hitomi had asked, incredulous during a lunch break in the first three months of first year. “But, he’s so...so... _Yamamoto_.”

Chiharu had just shrugged at her friend, nonchalantly mumbling something about the heart wanting what it will and feigning the calmness she wished she could feel in the moment because, really, of all the people her soul could have wanted to reach out to, it just had to be Yamamoto- I-faint-when-a-pretty-girl-looks-at-me-Taketora.

The crush was something she was sure she would grow out of — that she would see him face plant in the quad or watch him drool at the sight of a particularly short skirt and all the rose-colored feelings would break apart and float away on the breeze. But that damn affliction stuck to her like the remnants of a thrift store price tag she’d spent more time than she cared to admit trying to get rid of. He still made a fool of himself, there was no doubting that, but instead of turning her heart to stone, his fumbling only made her mumble about not believing she was in love with such an idiot while she struggled to keep the corners of her mouth from turning upward.

Third year was when he finally started noticing her and it had been through the weird combination of luck and meddling friends. Because, lord knows, there would have been no other reason for Chiharu to wear thigh highs with her school uniform instead of her normal ankle socks and no reason for her hair to take any other shape than the barely-brushed, limp string-look she had going for her for the past seven years.

She’d lost a stupid bet. (Was there ever any other kind?) It had been important at the time — a direct stab at her sense of pride — but she should have known better than to step up to the table with all her chips in and a terrible poker face. The probability of her making it through the break without texting her best friend about Yamamoto. The odds weren’t ever in Chiharu’s favor and Hitomi had clearly taken advantage of that. So, when it came right down to it, she was the only one she could blame for having to wake up two hours earlier than usual, as her best friend “dolled her up” for the first day of school.

Fate came through in it’s own way after that, placing her in the same class as Yamamoto, striking her home room teacher with the idea of assigned seating that put her right next to him, and for encouraging Taketora to play games online with Kenma the entire night before even though they would both have to be up early for the first day of school. So, when Chiharu walked into the classroom to start her final year of high school, it was to stares, whispers and the sight of Taketora passed out on his desk, arms folded beneath his head. _Not exactly the earth-shattering reaction Hitomi had hoped for_.

Chiharu had to stifle a giggle as she approached their shared table, sat down beside the drooling, passed out boy and started lightly poking at the shaved portion of his head, hoping to wake him up with the light movements. He groaned slightly as she nudged his head, but refused to awake from whatever dream had it’s tight clutches around his consciousness. Sighing, she tucked a ringlet behind her ear before taking to repeatedly poking his cheek with her index finger.

“Yamamoto,” she mumbled. “It’s time to wake up. Class is going to start soon.”

Taketora groaned as he moved his face into his arms fully and nuzzled his nose further toward the surface of the desk. A mixture of impatience and amusement escaped through her nose as the corner of her mouth upturned. She had half a mind to complain aloud about how he was supposed to be falling all over her right now, but instead here she was trying to keep from admitting how utterly enamored she was with his sleeping form. Instead, she shook his left shoulder while repeating his name.

On the third shove he moved his head to the left again and slowly opened his eyes, one at a time, before blinking rapidly in succession. As the world started to come into focus, he started upright and began rubbing at his eyes as he snuck glances at the woman beside him.

“A-A-Angel,” Yamamoto stuttered, his eyes still blinking away the fog of sleep. Chiharu stifled a chuckle behind her hand and his face instantly inflamed.

“No, Yamamoto,” she teased. “It’s just me.”

Realization and full consciousness hit him at the same time and his face twisted it up in some crimson-hued concoction of embarrassment, awe and a sticky feeling in the bottom of his stomach akin to the guilt that comes with hindsight. When had that annoying girl who had been all freckles, frizzy hair and lanky limbs turned into this vision in front of him? It wasn’t like the school break had given her time to grow into a vixen — to mature into this woman with plush lips and the type of body that would haunt his dreams for the coming weeks. No, there hadn’t been time for such tremendous changes, so she must have been like this all along and he just had never seen. He had been too focused on her being synonymous with hard work and (justifiably) curt words to see the woman Chiharu had been this whole time. It had taken a pair of thigh highs and the light kiss of pink blush for him to wake up and he couldn’t fathom the idea that he was that superficial.

“Uhm,” he gulped, moving his eyes away from the small strip of exposed skin under the opened top button of her uniform. “You look different today, Enomoto.”

“I lost a bet,” she replied with a sigh, moving to retrieve a notebook from her bag and placed it on the desk. _But at least now you see me._

As Chiharu took to dating the first page of her notebook, Taketora found himself sneaking glances to his side and silently cursing fate. How was he supposed to get through his third year after coming to realize that his academic overseer was a fully actualized woman. And worse yet — that this entire time he’d been blind to her while she cared and gave so much to him without asking for anything in return. It made his body buzz, tingling from the tips of his fingers down through his lungs and straight to his toes, with too many feelings at once: the heaviness of regret, the tightening of nervousness, the pure joy of adoration, the mind-numbing coldness of fear. _Is this what love feels like?_

He was almost surprised when he walked into afternoon practice and realized the school day was over. He’d been that lost in the haze of his emotions and the untangling of the muddled thoughts in his head. Practice went by just as fast as the school day had and as the team cleaned the gym, Lev asked him if his “pretty project partner” was in his class again this year as Inuoka wished aloud that he was as lucky as Yamamoto to be so frequently paired with an intelligent beauty. _Had everyone seen her this way but him?_

It took him a solid week, when Enomoto had returned to barely brushed hair and ankle socks, to determine that he hadn’t been swayed only by the thigh highs and that he was _not_ coming down with some virus, but was simply diagnosed with an ailment of the heart.

For someone who went on and on about guts, though, he sure had a lack of them when it came to women, because as much as he felt electricity jolting through him each time she said his name, he couldn’t hold himself together long enough to get anything close to the words “please go out with me” out of his mouth in any coherent way. It was four months of emotional torture as his tongue refused to move in the way his love-crazed brain ordered but the words finally spilled out in the right order in the middle of a coffee shop as the two met to go over a summer break project for their history class.

He never really imagined she’d say yes, or that he would be waiting in the middle of the shopping center with sweaty palms and racing heart — that he would suddenly feel like she had stolen the oxygen straight out of his lungs when she walked up to him in that pink sundress and gave him that small smile he’d seen a millions times over (but somehow felt new and special now). The fact that he was sitting next to her in the movie theater, then beside her at the ice cream parlor and later walking beside her as she looked through the shop windows with eyes sparkling, was all beyond anything he could have dreamed of.

But it was also terrifying. Was he supposed to hold her hand? Was he supposed to offer anything her eyes danced upon? What was he supposed to talk about? _Did she even like volleyball_? His steps faltered as he shoved his hands in his pockets, dropped his chin toward the ground and struggled with the realities of what being in love meant.

“Tora?” Chiharu’s voice echoed in his head as the white tips of her pink converse entered his down-turned vision. “Is something wrong?”

Her question was met with brief silence as he thought through how honest he wanted to be with a woman he wanted to impress, but she’d been next to him for so many years now (and probably seen him at his absolute worst). What was the point of hiding his insecurities when she’d already seen most of them?

“I-I’ve never been a boyfriend before,” he mumbled to the sidewalk. “I don’t...don't know how to be a good boyfriend.”

Cautiously, Chiharu reached out with her right hand and tipped Yamamoto’s chin up with three fingers, making him look her in the eye as she shot him an understanding smile. With his face upright, she moved her palm across his cheek.

“That’s okay. I don’t know what I’m doing either,” she said, her voice a soothing beacon guiding him out of the tumultuous storm in his head. “We can figure it out together, okay?”

A grin spread across his face and, at least for that moment, he felt like he could breathe properly again.

“Okay. Yes!,” he replied, pulling his hands out of his pockets and reached for hers, intertwining their fingers before leading her down the path toward the next shop.

“Besides,” she continued, lightly nudging her shoulder into his side. “You’re cute when you’re flustered.”


End file.
